I wanted to check the recording quality when i record “what i hear”. So when i play a music file audacity records the sound. I guess it is the sound card audacity records, right?
Anyways, i recorded a high quality m4a file and expected it to be the same. Like exactly the same. However, audacity’s recording was just a little bit high pitched. You will most likely wont notice it unless you pay attentio. My question now is how do I get the exact same quality i.e. no high / low pitches etc.
Most techniques of self-recording play the show to the speaker or headphone system and then turn it around and bring it back in through the analog recording system. So you are listening to the round trip damage in your soundcard.
The only way around this is use a very high quality analog soundcard (I like the Behringer UCA202), or figure out a way to download the original files.
If you have a digital sound system, you can do it that way, too, but those aren’t as common.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_recording_audio_playing_on_the_computer.html
Computer makers only reluctantly support self-recording because it indirectly supports piracy. Some don’t support it at all and you will probably never find it on a list of computer features.
Koz
If you are currently on Windows Vista or later rather than Linux Mint, try recording with Windows WASAPI host in Audacity which should be a digital copy - see Tutorial - Recording Computer Playback on Windows .
If you provide the information requested in the pink panel at the top of the page, it makes it much easier to help.
Gale
I"m sorry, here should be all of the information :
Windows 8.1 64 Bit Pre-installed on my HP laptop. Audacity version is 2.0.5 and I used the .exe installer.
When I tried to record I used the Windows WASAP I Speaker/HP (Realtek High Definition Audio) | Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio) (loopback) options.
It does record and you can tell that it is the song. It is also no longer high pitched but I noticed that every now and then the audio goes very deep for a very small moment (0.5-1 second). However, I believe that it is the audio card. The songs should be 100% perfect (at least for my ears) because whenever I listen to the songs on my Samsung smartphone it is just fine. However, when I play them on my computer I hear those very deep moments where the voice for example is normal but all of a sudden goes deep for half a second. You can still tell that it is the voice you heard before just deeper.
Any way to fix this problem?
Record lossless
High quality M4A can sound lossless, but MP4/AAC is a lossy compression format.
Assuming you are recording streaming audio, the “original” is most-likely lossy and by converting to M4A you are going through a 2nd lossy compression step. Sometimes you can’t avoid that and the results aren’t always terrible, but it’s something you should be aware of.
I don’t think M4A/AAC compression is the problem, but have you tried exporting to WAV format?
Why should I export it as wav? I play a file which sounds to me like its very clear and I just want to record it with audacity and export it. I will probably export it as ogg or mp3. However, the recording has some problems as mentioned above, first high pitched (now again btw.) and sometimes very deep for a second.
I just wonder how to fix that problem. This is a new laptop and it worked perfectly on my other computer(no i cant use it anymore).
Same settings but the audio is a little messy.
If the Audacity recording is like that before you export, make sure you are turning off all the effects and enhancements in Windows Sound and in the control panel for your sound card (probably in the Windows Control Panel).
If you have Beats Audio you may not be able to solve the problem without getting a USB sound card.
Gale